


The Gucci Incident

by lokilickedme



Series: The Joker and The Thief [2]
Category: Loki - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Complete, Explicit Language, F/M, Jack Montague side story, Loki and Adam try about a dozen times to kill each other, Loki takes his father-in-law on a job, M/M, Oneshot, The Montague Boys, this is the last time Loki uses an animation charm on clothing items, those damn Gucci slippers, vampire/demigod dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-04 04:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10267835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: A Loki/Jack Montague oneshot featuring the Montague boys (Loki and Adam, Jack's husband and father respectively) as they embark on a side job - a hunt across New York City in search of the absconded enchanted bedroom slippers from chapter 38.As the less-than-friendly in-laws spend the course of a long night in hot pursuit of the foul mouthed and even fouler tempered footwear, the main mission shifts from the hunt to simply surviving each other.So who cries uncle first - the demigod or the vampire?





	

 

 

 

 Keep your enemies close, but your footwear closer.

 

 

 

"Would you mind terribly telling me what exactly it is we're hunting?"

Loki peered into the dark interior of the boxcar, his keen eyes focusing on...nothing.  Seeing in the dark was a passing skill for the god, better than mortal vision but not quite perfect due to his slightly muddied Jotun blood - it was Jack who could do it best, her halfling vampire eyes able to detect heat signatures and motion disturbances in the air.  He wasn't sure if their prey _had_ heat signatures, but another of her skills involved a very good sense of hearing, even better than his own.  Sooner or later the damn things would _have_ to make some noise.

He wished Jack was with him.

She wasn't, but he had possibly the next best - and worst - thing.

Her father.

Her father, who hated him with the fire and fury of a collapsing star going supernova.

"They're...small, furry creatures that shouldn't be exposed to mortals."

"So there's more than one."

"Uh...yes, there's a pair.  Two of them."

"I know what a pair is."

Loki whistled, crouching down to poke his head under the car.  He and Adam had been tracking the beasts since sundown and the troublesome things had somehow managed to stay a step ahead of them all night so far;  neither of them had had much patience to begin with and now here they were, on the east end of town, scrabbling around in the dark in the railway yards.

"Are they dogs?"

"What?"

"Dogs.  Quadriped domestic mammals, usually kept as pets."

Standing and stretching his back, Loki sighed heavily.  He'd declined to share any detailed information on the identity of their prey, opting to refer to them as simply something that he needed assistance apprehending.  "No, not dogs."   _And not here._  Sighing as he brushed the dirt off his knees, he pulled out his phone and checked the map again.  The yards emptied into a series of drainage gullies and a network of pipes that ran along the outer edge of the city.

_Shit._

"Ready to get your shoes wet?"

The look Adam shot him was pure hatred, but he followed with a sarcastic roll of his eyes, kicking the heel of Loki's finely crafted Testoni loafer as they headed toward the gullies.

"I wouldn't be worried about mine."

The god looked down, noticing that Adam wore the same kind of worn out black leather lace up boots that Jack favored.  Glancing down at his own with a heavy sigh, he found himself wishing for once that he didn't have such damn good taste in clothing.

 

 

A growl echoed through the pipe above his head, carrying along the length of it to the end of the tunnel;  they'd been tromping around in the murky damp of the drainage sinks for nearly an hour stalking the snarls and growls that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere without actually seeing anything.  But now, finally, a shrill little yipping sound from an open port promised to yield their foe.  Loki turned briefly to shoot a triumphant grin at the vampire, but before he could focus his eyes in the dark, something shot out of the hole and slammed into his shins, knocking him forward in a sloppy faceplant.  Adam watched as two small furry beasts ran past him, yapping and barking and screeching decidedly racial anti-Jotun epithets while the muddy Aesir scrambled to get back to his feet.

"I thought you said they weren't dogs."

Loki took off running after them, glancing back over his shoulder to yell at the vampire from halfway down the platform.  "Have you ever known dogs to be bigots with Italian accents?!"

Adam had to admit he hadn't.  Shaking his head in unamused disbelief, he broke into a run after the big god and what looked suspiciously like a pair of hideous bedroom slippers, still yapping and now cursing in very dramatic Italian.

 

 

"They either went into the drain pipe or back that way to the construction site."

"I'm not going in either one."

"Why not?  Aren't you pretty much invincible?"

"Yeah, it doesn't mean I want to get dirty though."  Leaning against the alley wall, Adam narrowed his eyes at Loki as he crossed his arms over his chest.  "Are you going to tell me now?"

"Tell you what?"

"What we're actually chasing?  Because I seem to remember signing on to help you track down alien bounty hunters, not escapees from your closet."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Those are fucking shoes, aren't they?"  Adam turned slowly, casting an annoyed glare at Loki till the big god finally met eyes with him and shrugged.

“It was Jack’s idea.”

The vampire said nothing, not verbally anyway;  he didn’t need to.  Loki blinked hard and sighed, getting down on his knees to look under a discarded car fender for the errant enchanted bedroom slippers.  Not there.  With a groan he wiped his palms on his coat lapels and moved on to the ominous dark mouth of the drain pipe at the end of the alley.

“At least they’re Gucci, they won’t go near the rough end of town.”

"Thank fuck for small miracles.  What the hell are you doing casting animation spells on inanimate objects?  Didn't the Sorcerer's Apprentice teach you anything?  This shit _never goes well."_

"Yes well...how do you know about animation spells?"

"I took Jack to see Beauty and The Beast."

Loki shot him a nasty look.  "This isn't Mrs Potts we're chasing.  It's a pair of very bad tempered footwear atrocities that don't seem to understand the boundary of their domain is _the fucking kitchen DOORWAY!"_  His voice rose with each word until he was yelling into the drain pipe, his words echoing back at him mockingly.  "And once I catch them I'm going to find a very large canine _in need of a CHEW TOY!"_

"Stop yelling."

"I'll fucking _yell if I WANT TO!"_

"Shut up, I'm trying to listen."

Standing again, Loki stared at the vampire for a long moment;  Adam had his head cocked to one side, very much like a dog listening for its master's whistle.  He grinned approvingly.

"There, that's what I enlisted you for."

Adam only glared at him, heading off down the alley into the darkness.

 

 

The construction site was just as dark as the alley, lit only by the dim glow of the streetlamps a half block away.  Loki's eyes had adjusted to the night as well as they were going to, but he could tell by Adam's widely expanded pupils that he was doing far better.   _Enlist a creature of the night to hunt a creature in the night.  Loki Laufeyson's first rule of lazy stalking._

Something that sounded suspiciously like curses carried to them on the still night air and both men turned slowly, trying to pinpoint the direction the sound was coming from.

"What are they saying?"

"Something about your mother."

The look on Loki's face told Adam he wasn't amused, but the vampire couldn't bring himself to care much one way or the other.  "What makes you think I know?"

"You're Italian, aren't you?  Romeo and Juliet, fair Verona?  Jack says you're Romeo's great great uncle or something."

"This is not even close to the dialect we spoke.  This is some sort of perverted bastardization that sounds like something you'd overhear in a brothel on the east end of Tuscany."  His voice trailed off at the end of his sentence as realization set in.  The shoes were snarling something about blue dicks and lubed horns.  "You fucking pervert."

"What?  What are they saying?"

"That someone's had a curved brass horn up their ass."  He whirled around, his eyes glowing red.   _"What the hell have you been doing to my little girl?!"_

"What do you mean, what am _I_ doing to _her?_  "  Loki grabbed Adam's wrist as his hand went around his throat.  "What makes you think it was _her_ ass?"

Adam stopped, his eyes fading quickly.  "Oh."

The two titans released each other, straightening their clothes and shooting one another the latest in a long line of warning looks.  Adam pointed a finger in Loki's face to drive home his unspoken threat, but Loki ignored it, shaking his head as he turned to walk away.  But his impish nature won out over his good sense and he shoved up a finger of his own, not in the least bit surprised when he felt the weight of Adam's body hitting him in the back to take him down in a flying tackle.  This had been coming all night, the unfriendly tension between them boiling quietly until now neither of them cared to contain it any more.  Calling up his Seidr to protect him from the teeth he knew would be plunging into the back of his neck, Loki reached up over his head and pulled Adam over him, flipping him to the ground in front of him.  Just as quickly, Adam was back on his feet and coming at him again. 

"Alright that's it."

Loki spun, throwing his arm out just as the vampire charged at him;  loosing a bolt of pure energy that caught Adam squarely in the chest, he dropped to one knee and threw out his other hand, balled into a fist.  A blast of emerald light engulfed the two of them, lighting the night sky over the construction site bright as day.

The blast to the chest only served to slow Adam momentarily, but the light stopped him in his tracks.  There was a moment of surprise and he looked at Loki, disbelief in his eyes as white smoke began to roil from his exposed skin.

"You fucker!  That's cheating!"

"And using Jack as a murder puppet wasn't?"  Twisting his hands, Loki yanked the light away just long enough for Adam to recover briefly, then threw it back into place when he charged him again.  "Just stop it, asshole.  You're not going to win and neither am I - what we _are_ going to do is wreck each other and when we get home your wives are going to be pissed with me...and mine with you."

A furious growl erupted from Adam's throat, a sound of feral murderous anger that gave the god a bit of a chill.  He'd gone up against many monsters, creatures of darkness, even other gods in his many long years of dicking around with pretty much anyone in the cosmos worth picking a fight with, but that sound - there was no mistaking it.  That was the sound of absolute uncontrolled rage, and he'd heard it before.

He'd heard it in his own voice.

It was misery and fury and pain and despair and absolute last ditch _nothing to lose._  And it was as sad as it was frightening, because he knew what had provoked it in himself.

Lowering his hands, he let the blinding light drop to darkness again.  And somewhere in the dark, the vampire gasped softly, a sound of both relief from suffering and acceptance of fate.

"Thank you.  Dickhead."

Loki nodded, turning his back to him.  It was an inadvisable move - Adam had proven himself less than trustworthy and more than willing to grab for the suckerpunch, but somewhere in that begrudgingly muttered gratitude was something reminiscent of a momentary truce.  Scrunching his nose at the acrid smell of burned skin, he glanced back at him over his shoulder, careful to avoid eye contact lest it be taken as a challenge.

"Do you need assistance in healing?"

"Fuck off."

"I can make it daytime again."

The silence that answered was more than enough to clue him that this particular battle was over.  Heading off down an adjoining alley, Loki closed his eyes for a moment, allowing a brief few seconds of regret to stab his heart.  Adam might be his current nemesis and second biggest problem, but he was Jack's father, and for that the god felt remorse for injuring him.

But apologies would only get him a viciously snarled _Fuck you_ in return, so he shrugged it off and continued into the darkness.  It would only be ten, twenty minutes tops before the vampire tried to kill him again.

_In-laws._

 

 

"This way."

"What?  No, they're this way."

"Are you stupid?  I can hear them - "

"If you'd shut off your pathological inner monologue long enough to fucking listen..."

Loki stopped, a dumb look on his face.

"Wait, you can hear what I'm saying in my head?"

Adam shot him a smug look.

"What the fuck, you creeping deviant.  Get out."

"You're shockingly easy to read."

"And why is that, precisely?"

"Because you're a reformed liar."

That word - _reformed_ \- took Loki off guard and he stopped, scowling in deep thought.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd told a lie.  Did he even remember how?

"I'm not reformed."  The huff of laughter from the vampire told him his fib was less than believable.   _Shit, I'm out of practice._ "How exactly does that make me easy to read?"

"A liar has to constantly keep his lies straight, it creates mayhem in your thoughts, makes them hard to hear.  But a liar that's gone straight...you don't really know how to do it, do you?  The linear thinking, the lack of internal chaos.  It's not your forte."

Loki thought about it for a moment, his expression finally falling to an angry frustration.  "Shut up."

Adam grinned, moving past him, slamming his shoulder into him as he passed.

 

 

"So finish telling me why these atrocities exist?"

"Well, Pablo Gucci thought it would be fun to use kangaroo fur in bedroom attire for the Fall Line and - "

"Are you fucking serious?  I mean _why_ are they _alive?"_  Adam rolled his eyes.  Goddamn name-dropping demigods.   _Snobs and elitists._

"Oh.  Um...well, Jack was bored.  She wanted a pet and I wouldn't let her have a cat.  She's got a raven, but it's not cuddly, so - "

"So you dropped a poorly executed animation charm on a pair of hideous slippers without considering the consequences of them releasing themselves on their own recognizance."

Loki looked guilty for a moment.

"They weren't meant to get out of the apartment."

"But they did."

"Obviously."

The two men stood staring at each other for a long while, Adam glaring, Loki casting his eyes nervously past Adam's head.

"You left the door open, didn't you."

"No."

There was a tense silence while Loki fidgeted, feeling very much like he was the younger of the two despite his three thousand year plus advantage over the vampire.  He had the uncomfortable sensation of being expected to confess to a bit of mischief that he hadn't wholly been responsible for, but which had originated, undeniably, with him.  "Jack knocked a hole in the wall."

"Oh?  Why'd she do that?  Trying to get away from those fucking horns?"

_"She_ was wearing the horns."

Adam made a sound of disgust as he got down to look under a pallet of crushed boxes.  "I don't want to hear this."

"You started it.  She knocked a hole in the wall summoning Mjolnir."

"That possessed sledgehammer?"  He reached gingerly into the darkness under the pallet, grimacing.  "And what was she summoning Mjolnir for?  Hopefully to bash your head in with it - "

"Do you really want to know?  Because I'll tell you."

"No."

"I will, you just have to say so - "

"NO."

Loki grinned, feeling like he finally had the upper hand again.  He was finding this back and forth power struggle with Adam intensely invigorating, even though he seemed to be losing a good half of the time.  But he felt as if the ever tipping balance of strength between them would eventually pan out to create a skewered equality of sorts, and anything that would cement Adam's recruitment could only be a good thing.  They didn't have to be friends.  They just needed to be able to work together without either of them ending up dead or a pile of smoldering ash.  He watched as Adam got back to his feet and looked around, his interest in the search now beginning to show.  It had obviously been far too long since his reclusive nature had allowed him the joy of a night hunt.

_Welcome to the dark side, asshole._

 

 

"We need to hurry, it's going to be light in a couple of hours."

Loki glanced behind him, one eyebrow going up in surprise when he saw Adam staring in agitation at his wrist.  The night would soon be drawing to a close and they were still fruitlessly chasing a pair of ridiculous footwear around the outskirts of the city.  Ludicrous, but no more so than the scene before him.  "You wear a watch?"

"Of course I wear a watch.  Wouldn't you?"

"Well...I hadn't really thought about it.  I suppose."  He grinned, amused at the revealing show of vulnerability.  A vampire looking nervously at his watch.  It struck him funny and he started to laugh, but his outburst was cut short by a sharp pain in the back of his calf.  "What the - ?"

One of the slippers had darted out from under a dumpster and was viciously attacking him, snarling and tearing at his pant leg.  He drew his foot back to shake it off, but the little creature hung on.

"Found one."

"Yes I see that.  A little help?!"

Adam shook his head, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, enjoying the hell out of the scene playing out in front of him - the Trickster God, famous even on this little backwater planet, reduced to dancing around waving a leg in the air in a futile attempt to free himself from the viselike grip of the jaws of his own twisted creation.  A shoe, brought to life to amuse his paramour, now rabid and intent on eating him from the ankle up.   _Poetic._

"You're doing fine.  Try throwing something."

"Like what, your dick?!  Come here!!"

"You're on your own, Silvertongue."

Loki cursed, kicking madly at the possessed slipper;  its sharp teeth were hitting bone and it smarted like hell, not to mention the damage it was doing his trousers - and his pride.  "Okay, you want to play that way?!  Your daughter likes being choked while I'm filling every hole on her delectable little person and she's got a particularly strong anti-gag reflex, I can hit her G-spot from her throat before she even thinks to use her safe signal.  It's bloody fucking impressive and believe me, I've known a few Scyllan prostitutes who - "

Adam's head whipped up, his face a twisted mask of instant rage tempered heavily with a murderous disgust unlike anything Loki had ever seen on a sentient creature.  He'd hit a nerve, that much was obvious.

_"My daughter has to have a safe signal?!_  What the fuck are you goddamn miscreants doing??!"

"Lots of that and - goddammit!!"  Loki slapped at his shin where the slipper was ascending, snarling, toward his crotch - "you couldn't handle the rest, _dad."_

"That's it, you die today fucker."

And in that moment the second slipper charged out from under the dumpster, launching itself at Adam's middle and forcing him to break off his own attack to grab it.

"That's it, good boy!" Loki yelled, on his back now with his leg up, the rabid snarling beast still attached to his knee and hanging over his face as he tried to pull it off.  "Gnaw his gonads off!"

_"Giù!  Sedersi!  Tallone!!"_  

The second beast stopped thrashing instantly, going still in Adam's hands, whimpering petulantly as he hissed at it to shut up and stuffed it into the thick burlap sack they'd been hauling around with them all night.  It started snarling again, but he tied the top shut and tossed it against the wall angrily;  there was a yelp, then the noise settled into a low warning growl.

"A little assistance?!" Loki yelled from the ground where he was still struggling with his own attacker.  Magic gone awry was a difficult thing to overpower, even when he was the originator...misfired charms often grew in strength, compounding until they could no longer be contained.   _The Sorcerer's Apprentice,_ he thought with a dark bit of annoyed humor.   _I'd love to be dealing with an overabundance of brooms right about now._ "Could you - maybe - _FUCK!!_ \- do that again, for this one?  You know, _before it fucking eats me?!"_

Adam smirked, grimacing a little as the injuries to his hands healed;  the little creature had ripped him up fairly badly, and he was rather enjoying watching the old god roll around on the ground being torn apart by its mate.  "On one condition."

"Oh shit."

"Annul the marriage."

Loki was kicking at the slipper with his other foot but it only made it angrier, latching onto his shoe with a cacophony of high pitched barking as he yelled and swung at it with anything he could grab.  "What the hell for?!"

"Just do it."

"No."

Adam shrugged, turning to walk away.  "Then deal with it on your own, it's your mess anyway.  Shame about the Testonis."

"Holidays!"

"What?"

"I'll bring her home for holidays, all of them, whatever you celebrate just send me a text and I'll bring her home for it."

Adam considered it, squinting in thought for longer than was strictly necessary as Loki struggled to keep the enchanted slipper from ripping his throat out.  "Any time I say?"

"Any time!  Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, Easter, National Pancake day, I don't care!"

There was another unnecessarily long pause as Adam weighed the offer.  He almost decided to let the god of the assholes clean up his own ridiculous mess, toying seriously with the idea of opening the bag and turning the other slipper loose on him just to watch the festivities - but in the end he simply yelled  _"Giù!"_ and watched smugly as the ferocious little beast released its grip on Loki's leg and retreated, whimpering, to sit quietly beside him.

Giving Loki a disapproving glare, he dropped the bag next to his foot.

_"All_ the holidays, whether we celebrate them or not - everything on the books, and that includes the bullshit stuff like paper cut awareness day and anything else they come up with."

The dark god nodded, eyeing the growling slipper warily as he rubbed his bleeding ankle.

"Plus whenever her mothers miss her."

"Of course."

_"And_ you let her get a damn cat."

Loki started to protest, but a quick shake of the bag made him instantly more amenable to the demand.  He nodded, sighing heavily.

"Deal."

 

 

"What did you say to it?  What charm was that?"

Adam gave a derisive little laugh, rolling his eyes as he hefted the bag over his shoulder.  The slippers were fighting inside it, snarling and thrashing violently.

"You mean to tell me you never tried telling them to sit?"

"What?"

"Haven't you ever had a dog before?  The three most common commands a dog will obey - sit, down, and heel."

"You...you told them to sit?  That's it?  That's all?"

"Yep."

The look on Loki's face was priceless, caught somewhere between disbelief and the realization that it had been just that simple.  "Okay but what tongue was that?  And where did you learn it?  It has to have been powerful to override the enchantment, who taught you something that strong?"

Adam scowled, shaking his head as he waited for the light to turn.  He was halfway across the street when he noticed Loki wasn't behind him.

"You coming?"

Loki was still standing at the curb, a faceless wraith in a long black overcoat until the headlights of an approaching cab cast their glow across him and Adam could see that there was a half smile, just barely visible, softening the sharp, dangerous lines of his face.

"What was it, Nosferatu.  Tell me."

"Buy Jack some new clothes, she looks like a bag lady."

Loki laughed, nodding.  "Done."  Stepping into the street, he caught up, his eyes locked to the vampire's until they fell into stride alongside each other.  "So _what was it."_

Adam shrugged nonchalantly, as if the god should know the answer to this one already.

"They're Gucci, remember?"

"Yes..."  A slow realization dawned, spreading a look of amusement across Loki's face.  "That was Italian?  Giù means sit in Italian??"  Stepping out of the way to dodge an oncoming bus, he chuckled at the overwhelming simplicity of the solution.  His own chaotic mind had been spinning and smoking all night, weighing options and concocting fantastical plots and unlikely plans to outsmart a bit of fun gone haywire.  And the vampire had simply said _sit._ "So you _are_ from Verona.  So tell me, the Capulets versus Montagues thing, did that all get resolved in the end?  I mean the narrative implies the families kissed and made up once the younglings were dead, but I've seen you Montagues in action, you are _stubborn_ assholes - "

Without looking back, Adam tossed the bag over his shoulder;  it landed at Loki's feet, snapping and snarling, and the big god did a frantic scramble backward to get away from it before he realized it was still tied shut, the razor-toothed little monsters still contained safely inside.

"Zitto tu fottuto idiota."

Gingerly picking the bag up, Loki pulled his phone out of his coat pocket and spoke into it.  "Siri, translate _zitto tu fottuto idiota."_

The app's distinctly proper female voice immediately replied, "Shut up you fucking idiot."

Somewhere in the darkness ahead he heard the vampire laughing.

"Nice."

 

 

_~la conclusione~_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *original image of Loki courtesy of @vivianstark, image of Adam via the web, both altered and played with by me


End file.
